*By which we mean the food of
the Levant**, but we said Middle Eastern to draw you in.
**It’s really Lebanese food
that we are talking about, but we don’t want to alienate Syrians and
Palestinians.
There could be no doubt that
Levantine cuisine is the greatest in the world, but few people know that it is
the product of centuries of ideological conflict, philosophical debates and
conceptual disagreements that have often pitted brother against brother and
mother against daughter. Before it crystallised into its current form we all
love and enjoy, it went through epochs of internecine struggles that the field
of food theory has never witnessed the likes off before or since. Here is the
fascinating story of how the beloved tabbouleh acquired its current form and
why kibbeh looks like a rugby ball.
Much like any Lebanese meal,
it all begins with hummus. If you don’t know what hummus is, it’s a dish made
of chickpeas… hang on, if you don’t know what hummus is, what are you doing
reading this? At the end of the third millennium BC a revolution in the
consumption of chickpeas occurred in Mesopotamia, in the Akkadian empire to be
specific. For centuries people were used to eating chickpeas whole, until
someone thought to mash them and add some olive oil.
This simple innovation caused
huge controversy in Akkadian food circles. Commoners took to the new dish with
gusto, and it became very popular in cities like Uruk and Mari. But the
aristocracy felt threatened and the clerics in particular despised this attack
on the integrity of the spherical chickpea. As the priest Gummar of Ur put it:
‘This barbarous mashing of the perfect chickpea is nothing short of blasphemy’.
(From a clay tablet found in Tall Kayf.)
This debate was to rage on for
centuries, and the legacy of the anti-hummus camp still survives in the form of
the hummus-balila abomination, which is nothing more than chickpeas in a plate
with no mashing or chopping involved. But in the triumph of the hummus we see
the first serious challenge to the authority of the clerics and the aristocracy
in the Middle East. It was to be a victory for commoners against the puritanism
and stuffiness of the rulers. (Stuffing food will become a subject of
controversy centuries later as we shall see.)
Our second course, if you
excuse the pun, is the tabbouleh, the ‘princess of all salads’ as renowned
Lebanese al-Nahda thinker Jameel al-Bustani called it. Tabbouleh was crucial to
the formation of a new Levantine identity under Ottoman rule, exploiting the
Ottomans’ weakness when it came to salads despite their otherwise impeccable
culinary achievements. To this day, Turkish salads remain half-hearted attempts
at mixing vegetables unconvincingly. But I digress.
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The rise of tabbouleh
coincided with the rise of fattoush, but this in fact was no coincidence. The
two Levantine salads were the products of two different schools of thought
that revolved around the philosophical question of how fine one should chop
ingredients in a salad. The nationalist modernisers, intent on social and
ethnic integration favoured the tabbouleh as a symbol of social cohesion,
whereas rationalists preferred a salad like fattoush in which ‘each
ingredient retained its identity.’ (An expression still common among Lebanese
politicians until today.)
The conflict raged on for
centuries and has not been resolved until today. One of the most difficult
questions to answer in a Lebanese restaurant is ‘tabbouleh or fattoush?’
Whichever one chooses, the legacy of the historic conflict is always there.
Attempts at reconciliation by ordering both are considered bad form.
However, the major food
conflict in the 18th century was sparked off by Napoleon’s campaigns in the
Levant. The rationalist emperor was incensed by the locals’ way of serving
mezzeh dishes haphazardly with no clear order or sequence. As he wrote in one
of his letters to his wife: “sometimes the hummus comes first, sometimes the
tabbouleh, and one is lost for he does not know what to expect. I miss you
very much.” The chaotic way of serving food as it became ready was an affront
to the Emperor’s Enlightenment values, and he thought that his attempt to
modernise the Levant had to start with altering this non-linear way of
serving food.
Napoleon recruited his chief
food theorist Vincent Mangetout to wage his battle against the randomness of
mezzeh. Mangetout set out to work, writing a pamphlet lambasting this
practice and attributing the backwardness of the people of the Levant to this
non-sequential way of serving food. “Much like night follows day, it is the
natural order of things to have a definite rhythm. The three-course French
meal is the purest representation of this rational order, man stamping his
authority on the world through reason and discipline.”
The pamphlet enraged locals
from Syria to Lebanon to Palestine. Local circles were formed to organise
opposition to Napoleon’s draconian reforms, and civic disobedience followed.
Extremists took to eating their dessert first but they were criticised for
being unnecessarily dramatic. Amidst the turmoil, a group of Lebanese
thinkers influenced by European ideas yet keen to emphasise their own identity,
found a compromise. The meal would begin with the mezzeh, but then progress
to the main course and later fruits and desserts. As a result, people eating
Lebanese food to this day still find that they are too full when the main
course, usually grilled meat, arrives, but they are too shy to admit it so
they try to force down a few morsels.
And much like any decent
Levantine meal, we end with the dessert. It is here that the legacy of the
different cultures and peoples that have inhabited the Levant come together
in a superb display of mastering the art of satisfying the sweet tooth. But
even here the field is not without its own history of controversy. The main
conflict is between the epicureans and conservative religious puritans who
objected on principle to Arab sweetened pastries as ‘the ultimate form of
temptation’.
The leading critic of Arab
desserts was the scholar al-Maryouffi who saw Arab pastry as a symbol of the
decadence of the royal courts and the subsequent decline of Islamic culture.
He also waged a war against the ‘unnecessary euphemisms’ implied by the names
of desserts such as znoud el sett (the forearms of the lady), which to his
mind clearly indicated their role as instruments of temptation, mixing
gluttony with sexual desire.
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“The way the layers of pastry
crush against the cream filling, oozing the rosewater sugar over one’s tongue…
is nothing short of a sin. Many a man of weak-faith says ‘this is heavenly’,
adding blasphemy to this excess, this temptation should be resisted by every
good believer.” Al-Maryouffi said in a famous text on the subject.
Reformers hit back against
al-Maryouffi and his rigid interpretation of religion and the strength of human
will. The conflict escalated into a full philosophical confrontation that drew
in wide circles of scholars and philosophers, and putting the question of
dessert at the heart of the theological battle over human will. The continuing
popularity of Arab desserts suggests that the majority of people were convinced
by the reformers in a definite philosophical victory.
Al-Maryouffi himself was fond
of eating those pastries however, and despite his efforts to conceal his secret
indulgence he was spotted by people from the other camp who were quick to
denounce his hypocrisy in public. Not one to lose an intellectual argument
easily he rebutted their attack, arguing that he only ate pastries because they
were a good way to strengthen one’s faith by testing it to its limit. He
famously said: “I do not take any earthly pleasure out of this, it is
reprehensible. Yumyumyum.”
- See more at:
http://www.karlremarks.com/2015/01/deconstructing-theoretical-currents-in.html#more
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